The thing about being in an escorted tour to a country where one can't understand the language is that there is great reliance on the tour director. And should the tour director decided that his clients need not know what exactly they are eating, except to know the type of meat (chicken, fish, pork, beef) is good enough (because from his experience, most would just be interested in taking photos of their food and posting them on IG and not bother about the dishes), meant that I had to do A LOT of checking up about what this dish is.
After all that checks, I think (I am fairly confident) of identifying this dish as the Tochitura Dracula cu mamaliguta (or as google translates tells me - Dracula stew with mamaliguta).
This is a pork stew based dish at the Casa Vlad Dracu with mushrooms and this curious yellow slightly bouncy thing that I had initially took to be very very very dehydrated millet porridge. But then I had someone roll her eyes at me to remind me that millet is not a crop traditionally grown in Europe. So this yellow stuff couldn't be millet. It could be corn instead.
Indeed the yellow stuff is cornmeal. And I was quite blown away by it. The mamaliguta came quite unsalted, and nicely warmed to a very cosy temperature for a cold winter lunch and had this texture that is quite different from anything I have eaten before. I think I can eat a lot of mamaliguta.
Apparently, it is also a healthy alternative to refined carbohydrates.
